In the 16th century, during its conquest of South America, the Spanish Empire forced countless Incas to work extracting silver from the mountaintop mines of Potosí, in what is now Bolivia—then the largest ...

(Phys.org) —What else is new: Earnest people who are aware of the difficulties very poor families face in many regions of the world wish for safe, cheap drinking water for everyone on the planet. The difference ...

(Phys.org) —A combined team of researchers from the U.S. and China has found a direct link between gaseous pollutants from motorized vehicles and industrial emissions and the thick haze that often covers ...

Nanoparticles, engineered materials about a billionth of a meter in size, are around us every day. Although they are tiny, they can benefit human health, as in some innovative early cancer treatments, but ...

(Phys.org) —Harvard researchers have created an inexpensive detector that can be used by health care workers in the world's poorest areas to monitor diabetes, detect malaria, discover environmental pollutants, ...

A pair of air pollutants linked to climate change could also be a major contributor to the unparalleled rise in the number of people sneezing, sniffling and wheezing during allergy season. The gases, nitrogen dioxide and ...

A paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B today says that mercury levels in arctic ivory gulls have risen almost 50 fold over the last 130 years. Scientists think this increase in mercury pollutants could ...

What would inspire you to cut your electricity use: Finding out how much money you could save, or knowing how much cancer-causing air pollution you could eliminate? A multidisciplinary study conducted at ...

Driving vehicles that use electricity from renewable energy instead of gasoline could reduce the resulting deaths due to air pollution by 70 percent. This finding comes from a new life cycle analysis of conventional ...

Research by Indiana University scientists finds that soil may be a significant and underappreciated source of nitrous acid, a chemical that plays a pivotal role in atmospheric processes such as the formation ...